Page 25 of Nothing Left

"I don't remember, but I guess we would have used the same place we always did.”

“And what’s that?” Wyatt encouraged her.

“It’s a company called Expresso. They do very fast delivery of coffee, drinks, pizza, and burgers in the area, and we all have the app on our phones. So wherever we got the food from, Expresso would have brought it."

That, again, was very helpful.

"Do you remember locking the front door at all?" Juliette asked again, but Heather shook her head. "I wish I remembered more," she said sadly.

“Any time you remember anything, you must try to find a way to connect with us,” Juliette encouraged her. “Tell the warder or the guard that it’s important. Try to get the message to me, and I’ll come here and speak to you as soon as I can.”

She still wanted to know what the zigzag teeth memory had been about, but at least they had something now. A driver from Expresso had visited this apartment late at night, bringing pizza.

Perhaps he'd seen or heard something.

This was a new witness, and they needed to find him urgently.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Expresso's head office, on the first floor of a building near the Gothic Quarter, was as bustling with activity as Juliette had imagined it to be. It was eight thirty in the morning by the time she, Wyatt, and Sierra reached it, but there were already motorcycles buzzing in and out and two women at work in the office. One was on the phone, and the other was packing orders.

Looking at the setup, Juliette saw that there was a coffee bar and espresso delivery service on site, a liquor warehouse next door, and then she guessed drivers would also head out to fast food kiosks nearby when delivery orders came in.

She knocked on the office door. It took a minute before the frantic-looking woman who was manning the phones and the computers could leave her post and come to the door.

Eventually, with the surge of orders having been controlled, she walked over. She was a genial-looking, round-faced woman in her forties, wearing a branded shirt with a coffee cup in her pocket.

"Morning, morning," she said in Spanish. Showing her ID, Juliette replied likewise.

"Morning. We're from the FBI and looking to track down one of your drivers, who may have information on a crime."

The woman's face changed, now looking wary rather than genial. "A crime? Do you have proof of this?" she asked.

"Yes. We're investigating a recent murder, and we believe that a driver from your company was in the area, and probably at the apartment, around the time of the crime," Juliette explained.

"Wait, would that be the American murderess that everyone is talking about?" the woman said, sounding shocked.

"She's a suspect rather than a murderess," Juliette said. "We're still trying to get a full picture of what really happened on that night."

The woman nodded. "It sounded strange to me that she would stab her friend, but people can always surprise you. I'll do what I can to help. What do you need from me?"

"We need the name and contact information of the driver who made a delivery to that apartment, and also the time of the delivery and his movements afterward," Juliette said.

"Okay, okay. We don't usually give this out," she said firmly.

Juliette quirked an appealing eyebrow. “This is a very serious situation,” she reminded her. “Expresso could play a role in solving this crime.”

She thought about that and then nodded. “Okay. I can see why you need to know this, so I will give you the information, but please don’t tell my boss. Rather say that – I don’t know, someone saw his name tag or his motorcycle or something?”

“There’ll be no need for the information to come from you,” Juliette reassured her.

“Okay. That’s good.”

"Has the driver worked for you for long?" Juliette asked, but the woman shook her head as she moved to the computer to check the records.

"His name is Alfonso Perez, and he has only been working for us for two months. He moved to Barcelona recently, I think."

The printer whirred, and a page slid out. She handed it over.

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